Report: Guard's Error Opened Cell Doors
Former detention officer David Elswick
says his mistake enabled two juvenile
inmates to fight, resulting in one's death.
By CURTIS KRUEGER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 9, 2003
LARGO - An officer in training at Pinellas
County's Juvenile Detention Center said he
"accidentally unlocked" the cell doors of two
youths in May, allowing them to meet for a
deadly fight.
Detention Officer David Elswick, who has
since resigned, told Pinellas sheriff's
investigators he unlocked rooms 14 and 16 by
pressing buttons on an electronic control panel,
according to a sheriff's report released this
week. Afterward, 16-year-old Louis Lauro came
out of his cell, approached the cell of fellow
inmate Danny Matthews, and hit him.
Matthews, 17, fell and went unconscious after
what most witnesses said was two punches from
Lauro. Matthews was pronounced dead at a
hospital.
Elswick did not explain exactly what caused
him to open the two doors accidentally, but he
"stated that it was "common' for officers to hit
the wrong button which would unlock the wrong
door," according to the sheriff's report.
Since the May 31 fight, detention center
officers have stopped using the electronic
control panel to let youths out of their cells.
Now, officers must walk to individual doors and
unlock them with keys, said Catherine Arnold,
spokeswoman for the state Department of Juvenile
Justice.
This week the Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's
office decided not to charge Lauro with a crime,
because he and Matthews had threatened each
other all day, and had essentially agreed to
fight each other. Prosecutors considered it a
case of "mutual combat," with each party equally
responsible.
The sheriff's report on the closed
investigation, released at the request of the
St. Petersburg Times, raises questions about
inmate supervision at the detention center, a
jail for youths that is operated by the state
Department of Juvenile Justice.
Elswick could not be reached for comment
Friday. His mistaken opening of the cell doors
after the 8 p.m. lockdown released Lauro and
Matthews into a hallway, where they began their
brief and fatal fight.
Elswick told investigators no one told him to
open rooms 14 and 16, and he did not further
explain how such an accident would have
occurred.
But some of the more than two dozen inmates
interviewed for the report raised the
possibility it might have been more than a
random accident. Some youths said a fellow
inmate had called out and asked for rooms 14 and
16 to be opened. Others said inmates had been
plotting to push buttons on the control panel
themselves, when officers weren't looking, to
release the two youths apparently primed for a
fight.
Told about the report, Gregory Perenich,
attorney for the Matthews family, said "it seems
very curious that these particular cell doors
are opened when these are the two young men that
are bantering back and forth."
Lauro himself said in a taped statement he
was surprised when his door "popped" - opened
partway after the officer pushed an electronic
button. He said he had not been trying to get
out. But he did say he had earlier heard about a
plan by other inmates to get the cell doors
open.
Lauro said Matthews "was talking trash, and I
heard them talking about how they're going to
get the doors popped open."
He said another inmate "was telling them to
have room 14 and 16 doors popped open."
No one quoted in the report - inmates or
officers - suggested that JDC staff opened the
cell doors intentionally.
Arnold, of the Department of Juvenile
Justice, denied that the episode pointed to a
lack of proper training at the JDC, which is in
the Largo area and houses about 120 youths, most
of them awaiting court dates on juvenile
charges. She said a recent review rated training
procedures at 93 out of 100, which she said was
"exceptional."
She said Elswick, who was being paid a
$22,809 annual salary, resigned in June after
narrowly failing a state certification test. He
had worked for the agency since October of 2002.
The rancor between Lauro and Matthews had
been building for at least a day, with each
reportedly threatening to fight the other. But
the two barely knew each other; Lauro didn't
even know Matthews' name.
Lauro had been lying on his bunk in his
underwear at the time his cell door popped open.
When it opened, he thought of the rumors that
someone was going to try to get the doors
opened, and "I wasn't going to let them come to
my room and go into my room or do something," he
told investigators.
He wrapped a sheet around himself and walked
into the hallway to Matthews' cell. Matthews
also came out of his cell, with a sheet draped
around him. Matthews had a roommate in his cell
who was not involved in the fight.
Lauro said Matthews "scratched me or
something and that's when I hit him," the report
said.
As Detectives Misty Manning and Kurt
Romanosky talked to Lauro on June 1, the day
after the fight, Lauro needed to know something:
"If you can answer one question, is the kid all
right?'
"No," Manning said.
"Is he alive?"
"No."
Later, Lauro said, "I'm sorry for what I did.
. . . I didn't want to hurt the kid."
- Curtis Krueger can be reached at 727
893-8232 or at
krueger@sptimes.com
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